by Julia Pierrepont III

LOS ANGELES, June 16 (Xinhua) -- Over 53,000 fans flew into the Dodgers Stadium in downtown Los Angeles, which used to be the biggest vaccination place of the city, and witnessed the home team's win on Tuesday, the first day of official reopening of the U.S. state of California after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Many grocery stores, gymnasiums, restaurants and bars and other retail businesses relaxed the use of masks and social distancing, while other business owners stayed cautious.

As California dropped nearly all COVID-19 restrictions on Tuesday, the overall reactions from local Angelinos were decidedly mixed.

"My sense of (the reopening) is much ado about very little," Steve Chagollan, senior feature editor at the Hollywood Reporter, told Xinhua on Tuesday, noting that Los Angeles' infamous traffic jams had been back for months and eating inside restaurants had been possible for longer than that.

"It doesn't feel any different, but my opinion of it is we should err on the side of caution. So not overdue, but respectfully careful," he said.

With the same abundance of caution, the news publisher itself would be staggering until early September to roll out its large staff's return to work at the office in rotation, at which point it would be all hands on deck, much as it was before the pandemic struck.

Evelyn Xu, the CEO and owner of MyUnistar.net, a multilingual acting school and kids casting services headquartered in San Marino, a neighboring city of Los Angeles, told Xinhua that her company cautiously embraced the reopening by hosting an in-person acting summer camp this year.

The camp will require wearing masks and social distancing although Los Angeles County's public health department announced that those requirements were relaxed, according to Xu.

"Kids are super happy now they can interact with each other and parents also prefer in-person classes as they think their kids can focus more than in online classes," she explained.

For her, the pandemic has definitely changed the scope of their business and the reopening isn't likely to change that. Xu said that because much of its business has moved online, they now get students and applicants from other countries, too.

Victor Ortiz, a flooring contractor in Los Angeles, who was hired by homeowners to lay wood and laminate flooring in their houses, told Xinhua Monday that the reopening had yet to change how people take precautions against the virus.

"Most homeowners still want us to wear masks in their homes while we work and most of them ask if we are vaccinated before they bring us in," he said.

In the meantime, state officials said they would be keeping a close eye on infection rates following the opening to see if there was a resurgence.

James Chiao, theatrical producer and composer of the Chinese American musical "Tenor by Night," felt California was moving too fast and risking a renewed outbreak.

"So many people still have not been vaccinated," he told Xinhua. "It's not fair to people who have been vaccinated, and it is also not fair to those who have not been vaccinated yet. They are actually in danger -- exposed to the virus without any protection."

His concerns prompted him to create a promo-video called "Vaccination, the musical" and post it on multiple platforms to encourage the public to get vaccinated.

Chiao intended to maintain strict COVID-19 protocols amongst the workforce of a mannequin production plant that he owned, regardless of whether California's Occupational Safety and Health Administration voted to relax them statewide.

Marc Karzen, CEO and owner of RelishMix, a media data analytics firm based in Los Angeles, said that despite the reopening, the data showed a much longer recovery was still ahead for Hollywood's show business.

"Business is not usual yet," he told Xinhua. "No one is working back on the studio lots yet -- they're all still working from home."

"And there is enormous inconsistency in the Hollywood entertainment industry," he added. "What makes studios successful is the fact that they can just 'rinse and repeat' with all their releases. But those methods fly out of the window when marketing campaigns and release dates are constantly changing and unpredictable."

Like many other business owners who criticized California for its strict COVID-19 policies, Richard L. Anderson, a sound effects editor and Academy Award-winner, who directed a film during the pandemic, felt the reopening was long overdue.

"We should have opened up earlier. Our government killed lots of small businesses," he told Xinhua. Enditem

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)